One Plus 5 review: ultimately uncompromising

Already in our preliminary review we were able to gather some good experiences with the OnePlus 5. Two weeks and several patches later, our review of the strongest OnePlus 5 variant with 128 GB of memory and 8 GB of RAM goes to the next round. The software has been updated and optimized regarding some critical points, so we take a second look at the device with the potential to be the smartphone of the year.

Rating

Lowest price: OnePlus 5

OnePlus 5 release date and price

The 64GB internal memory and 6GB RAM version of the OnePlus 5 costs $479, while the 128GB internal memory and 8GB RAM version costs $539. The price jump between the two different memory variants is surprisingly low, especially when compared to other manufacturers. The OnePlus 5 will be available in two colors: Midnight Black and Slate Gray. The 128GB version is only available in Midnight Black and the 64GB version only in Slate Gray. The OnePlus 5 became available on June 27, 2017.

OnePlus 5 global prices

Country

64GB version

128GB version

US

$479

$539

UK

£449

£499

India

₹32,999

₹37,999

OnePlus 5 design and build quality

When you see photos of the OnePlus 5, it looks extremely similar to iPhone 7. But the moment you hold the OnePlus 5 in your hand, you can feel the difference. The OnePlus 5 feels significantly more ergonomic as the back and the edges are more curved than the iPhone 7. The OnePlus 5 also lacks the massive camera bulge that the iPhone 7 Plus has, but the device still has a slight wobble when it rests flat on a surface thanks to its slightly curved back.

The display is made of Gorilla Glass 5, which is meant to protect it from scratches and potential dropping. The soft aluminium frame, on the other hand, will likely show signs of age relatively quickly. Our review device came with a protective case, which did a great job protecting the aluminium surface as well as the 2.5D edges of the display.

OnePlus puts some OnePlus 5 devices from the production line in water, and they need to withstand it for 20 seconds. Although it doesn’t have IP certification, the OnePlus 5 should still be well-protected against water ingress accordingly. An independently made YouTube video shows how the OnePlus 5 can survive in water for a minute without being damaged.

Romain Heuillard from the French website Frandroid is even sure of it: “The OnePlus 5 is waterproof.” He claims to have exclusively learned that the OnePlus 5 would comply with IP67 certification, but OnePlus “refuses to take responsibility if the device were exposed to harmful quantities of water.”

OnePlus 5 display

The Full-HD display continues to rely on an AMOLED panel. The color brilliance is increased by sRGB or DCI-P3 profiles. OnePlus enhances the display settings with additional features such an Auto Night Mode and a Reading Mode.

While other smartphone manufacturers already offer significantly higher resolutions, OnePlus still relies on relatively simple display technology. Instead, they opted to optimize the software-side of display. As mentioned above, a Reading Mode has been integrated, which uses gray-scale mapping (this switches the display to black and white), filters out blue light and adjusts the sharpness and brightness of the display with the help of an ambient sensor. We've noticed that the minimum display brightness of the Huawei Mate 9 or the Xiaomi Mi 6 was noticeably lower than that of the OnePlus 5.

The display of the OnePlus 5 has excellent automatic brightness control. It works quickly and gives the impression that the display always has the same brightness; Whether in dark interior spaces or in the sunny outdoors.

Tom’s Guide measures the OnePlus 5 display’s brightness at 394 cd/m² and the color reproduction is 220% of the sRGB gamut. The maximum brightness is therefore below that of the Galaxy S8 (437 cd/m²) or the Google Pixel XLs (396 cd/m²). On the other hand, color reproduction is more accurate than on the Galaxy S8 (183 percent) or the Google Pixel XLs (191 percent).

OnePlus 5 special features

The OnePlus 2 already had a slider to mute the smartphone and the OnePlus 5 continues with this trend. It's an unusual feature to see on Android smartphones, and is more than just a nod to Apple. The Alert Slider lets you set your phone to Silent, Do Not Disturb, and Ring. You can also individually customize the settings as well.

The OnePlus 5 has room for two nano SIM cards and apparently supports all available LTE (4G) frequency bands. If you are Verizon or Sprint customer, your going to have a little bit of an issue as it seems the OnePlus 5 does not support CDMA. The OnePlus 5 will also be shipped carrier-unlocked, so you won't be bound to any one carrier.

OnePlus 5 software

The OnePlus 5 currently runs on Oxygen OS 4.5.0 which is based in Android 7.1.1. When we were testing the device, it seemed like the Software wasn't 100% final, so I would like to hold back my final verdict. I encountered several bugs, which caused unreliable Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connections, battery performance issues due to ongoing background services as well as multiple other issues which were difficult to consistently reproduce.

When the final software version is released, Oxygen will be one of the most beautiful and thought-out Android flavors on the market. There is a dark mode that wraps the menus in a white-on-black theme. There is a Do not disturb mode for gaming where you can turn off notifications from certain apps (never be disturbed again by annoying pop-up notifications), There is a locker for apps and files, and the familiar Gestures - which you can use to open apps from a locked or deactivated screen. Another useful feature is the ability to natively take full page screenshots. More features can also be expected to roll out with the next updates.

As with previous OnePlus devices, unlocking the Bootloader (rooting) and installing Custom ROMs will not void the warranty. For more information on this topic, head to the OnePlus warranty page.

The software interface comes across as quite pure and feels relatively faithful to Google. The OnePlus Launcher is in large extent quite similar to the Pixel Launcher and the Google Assistant is also ready out of the box. The pre-installed apps are limited to Google Apps and a OnePlus Community app.

Unfortunately, the unwelcome news is that OnePlus only concentrated on functional improvements, at least in the initial patches. As a result, security updates are all but forgotten, which leaves known security holes open longer than necessary.

OnePlus 5 performance

Performance and camera quality were the development focus of the OnePlus engineers. As a result, the OnePlus 5 is one of the fastest smartphones on the market. Both synthetic benchmarks and real-world performance show that OnePlus really did its homework. But, of course, you can always find something wrong with anything.

Even after it received four patches, which arrived within the first two weeks, little has changed. The kernel still carries the ominous designation 4.4.21-perf+. However, the benchmark results have been three percent slower on average compared to those with the first software version. This does not change the fact that the results are incredibly good and everyday performance is fantastic.

Benchmarks: OnePlus 5 vs Galaxy S8

3D Mark Sling Shot Extrme ES 3.1

3D Mark Sling Shot ES 3.0

3D Mark Ice Storm Unlimited ES 2.0

Geek Bench Single Core

Geek Bench Multi Core

PC Mark Work 2.0

PC Mark Storage

OnePlus 5

3068

3932

38684

1944

6603

6592

4975

Samsung Galaxy S8

3174

3217

27330

1983

6402

6135

4644

However, it can be said that thanks to the 8GB LPDDR4x RAM and 128GB of UFS 2.1 memory, all load times are shorter than on most other smartphones. In combination with the new Wi-Fi and LTE antennas in the Snapdragon chip set, the data transmission speed is the fastest you can get in any currently available smartphone. In practice, I was able to download a 50 MB app within three seconds via Wi-Fi (5 GHz) and install and run it in another four seconds. For everything else, there is still Bluetooth 5.0.

The huge memory makes sure that once started, apps can remain in the RAM. This means that they do not have to be reloaded when they are called up again. In theory, this should reduce the power consumption, as it's very rare that an app has to be loaded a second time. It must be said though, that we didn't see the promised energy-saving effect in our tests yet. On the other hand, we did notice the performance improvement, especially when we were multitasking with multiple apps.

Slight lag is only visible in animations. Semi-professional YouTube smartphone reviewer and faultfinder Damir Franc alerted the community to a visible lag when scrolling, which we also detect on our test device (Oxygen OS 4.5.3) and cannot fix, even with a number of tweaks in the developer’s settings. See for yourself the part where Franc demonstrates it at 17 minutes in.

Even if this lag is visible, it has neither bothered nor interested me in the least in day-to-day life. Otherwise, performance was spectacular and I thought it was more important that it didn’t jerk or stutter under any circumstance. Since this is the case with the OnePlus 5, I won’t take away any points in the performance department.

OnePlus 5 audio

OnePlus didn't jump on the stereo train, so the OnePlus 5 only has mono-sound from a single loudspeaker at the bottom of the phone. The call quality is assisted by noise suppression, which helps you understand conversations even in noisy environments. The OnePlus 5 also retains its headphone jack, which is something the rumors ahead of the launch had speculated would be dropped. The OnePlus 5 delivers good sound thanks to the equalizer and Dirac HD. If you opt for Bluetooth headphones, you'll be pleased to know that your music and calls will sound equally good thanks to aptX HD.

OnePlus 5 camera

The second development focus of the OnePlus 5 was the cameras. The new model has a dual camera as its main camera. One of them has 20MP, while the other shoots with 16MP. This allows for a real 2x zoom, and some interesting depth of field effects in the focus mode.

Technically speaking, the rear camera is a Sony IMX 398 with 16MP, 1.12 μm pixels, f / 1.7 aperture and electronic image stabilization, and a Sony IMX 350 with 20MP with 1.0 μm and f / 2.6 aperture. The rear camera also has a two-color LED flash, but no laser focus. Instead of the laser focus, the camera uses a manual focus and/or phase detection.

Photos can also be saved in RAW format, however this slows down the saving process noticeably. Videos can be recorded in 4k 30 fps, 1080p 60 or 30 fps as well as in 720p 30 fps. You can take Slow Motion videos in 720p with 120 fps, as well as Time lapse videos in HD or Full-HD. In our test, the electronic stabilization only worked up to 1080p with 30 fps. The Google Pixel manages to do considerably better here.

For selfie fans, the front facing camera is a Sony IMX 371 with 16MP, 1.0 μm with a f / 2.0 aperture. The front facing camera also has the Qualcomm electronic stabilization and can shoot videos in 1080p and 30 fps. For reasons that may be, you can now also take time lapse videos with the front facing camera, though I haven't found an appropriate use for that yet. The videos are encoded in h.264; for the Audio OnePlus uses AAC at 96 kbit/s, and everything ends up in a MP4 container.

The default camera app of the OnePlus 5 is is simple and easy to understand. When you open it (which can also be done through a double tap of the power button), you end up in the automatic mode. If you then press the shutter button or half the volume rocker, an image is shot. This feature shoots photos lightning fast and almost always works on the first try.

If you're using basic photo mode, you can tap the 1x button to switch the zoom level to 2x. In doing so, you switch from one lens to the other. A bonus: the gained zoom is lossless. Carl Pei later clarifies that the optical zoom is at 1.6x, while the remaining 0.4x is realized through SmartCapture multiframe technology.

Many phones have a bokeh filter in their so-called portrait modes, and the OnePlus 5 isn't an exception here. The OnePlus 5 tries to directly compete with the Huawei P10 / Plus and the iPhone 7 with its portrait mode but unfortunately, it's not better than its competition. As you can see in the photo above, portrait mode seems to have problems with the edges of objects with a similar color palette. The bokeh effect also leaves much to be desired.

Image noise is superbly suppressed on the OnePlus 5. However, occasional Renoir-style spots of color are still detectable. But, it is not noticeable in the overall picture, but rather when you go into detail and zoom to 100 percent, as shown in the example above. The selfie cam provides similarly satisfactory results in low light as the rear camera.

The OnePlus 5 takes very beautiful photos in daylight with minute details and attractive colors. The automatic HDR performs excellently in high-contrast shooting situations. It increases the dynamic range, therefore preventing faded details in bright image areas, and provides a pleasant amount of detail in darker areas – two very common trouble spots for the small image sensors in smartphones.

The automatic white balance provides reliably good results, thankfully in troublesome situations as well, such as in mixed light.

However, the missing image stabilizer is noticeable under poor lighting conditions. The shortest shutter speed that OnePlus uses is 1/17 of a second. Competitors with an optical image stabilizer manage 1/4 seconds – and can reduce the corresponding ISO sensitivity by two apertures. The difference, for instance, can be clearly seen when compared directly to an iPhone 7 Plus, though admittedly, the Apple smartphone costs almost twice as much.

Finally, the double camera has brought about mixed feelings. One the one hand, Bokeh mode delivers attractive portrait photos with beautiful, blurred backgrounds.

However, using the zoom feature is very unorthodox: Both of the OnePlus 5’s lenses namely have focal lengths of 24 and 36 millimeters. When zooming the image with the “2x” button in the app, it jumps to a focal length range where the smartphone performs heavy interpolation, which is also noticeable in the results: pictures taken with 2x zoom are very grainy and often show unpleasant artifacts. Anyone who wishes to take native-resolution pictures with the two sensors must set the zoom to 1.6x using pinch-to-zoom, although the focal length gain is limited, too.

OnePlus 5 battery

As already mentioned in the performance section, I would like to hold back from forming a final verdict here. Some wakelocks in the background caused an increased battery consumption in stand-by. On a different day of testing, the display somehow managed to switch itself on and burnt through the battery power.

What I can say is that Dash Charge is amazing. Unfortunately, the fast-charging technology is as proprietary as a technology can be. Both the oversized Dash Charger and the thick red cable are not interchangeable with products from other manufacturers, unless you want to forgo the Dash Charging effect. Luckily, you can obtain affordable chargers at OnePlus.net. So, you should order two additional ones, one for your workplace and another for your car.

In a separate test that we undertook, Dash Charging was by far the quickest of all charging technologies. Half an hour of charging was enough to bring the OnePlus 5 up to 60% of its battery. The charging speed did slow down noticeably when it hit the last 20% but no other phone could match the charging speed.

In PC Mark’s Work 2.0 battery benchmark, the OnePlus 5 lasted 6:32 hours, placing it mid-field with competitors such as the Honor 9 (6:58), although it is better than the Galaxy S8 (5:37).

OnePlus 5 technical specifications

Dimensions:

154.2 x 74.1 x 7.25 mm

Weight:

153 g

Battery size:

3300 mAh

Screen size:

5.5 in

Display technology:

AMOLED

Screen:

1920 x 1280 pixels (420 ppi)

Front camera:

16 megapixels

Rear camera:

16 megapixels

Flashlight:

Dual-LED

Android version:

7.1.1 - Nougat

User interface:

Oxygen OS

RAM:

6 GB8 GB

Internal storage:

64 GB128 GB

Removable storage:

Not available

Chipset:

Qualcomm Snapdragon 835

Number of cores:

8

Max. clock speed:

2.45 GHz

Connectivity:

HSPA, LTE, NFC, Dual-SIM , Bluetooth 5.0

Final verdict

The OnePlus 5 has the potential to become a legend. It looks great, it’s lightning fast, takes good pictures, and can offer relatively good battery life. The manufacturer strives to improve the user experiences and optimize the flagship killer’s features using numerous patches. If they keep going at the pace that I have seen over the past two weeks, then I will have no problem giving the OnePlus 5 the title of “2017 Smartphone of the Year”.

Its predecessors were enthusiast devices, but the OnePlus 5 has the potential to be the device for the common man. Because its camera is finally competitive, the young manufacturer has mastered the last great hurdle to mainstream success. The compromises that had to be made with predecessors to date are now gone.

Unless you rely on provider features with as WiFi calling or find the remediable lack of security to be a dealbreaker, the OnePlus 5 is my current suggestion for your next smartphone purchase.

19 comments

Nice review. But if you only look for 1 review site and 1 opinion it's not ok, in that case google is your friend. I've found through it a website which shows overall score and reviews from multiple sources for OnePlus 5, it's interesting to compare different opinions. (rewagg.com)

The op5 is gonna be a legend huh! First off what happened to the nouget update on the op2? Plus you were just caught lying on benchmarks. I would not invest a penny in this company. Flagship killer I say bush-wa. Not at 500.00 dollars. Stay in China where you belong! Yikes!

its a shame all that ram and the camera fails to use it ... 8GB and 120fps is max i bought a £40 phone cant remember name i was 20yr old it came with a 5mp camera and it was able to do 360p at 517fps for 20seconds you needed light but hey who films with out good lighting anyways ... as you can imagine thats is exactly what a geek would want with 8GB ram id want something over 1000fps for atleast 30s real time skip to the best bit and cut and save at 30fps anyone who films in this kind of slow motion only needs about 10seconds real time and cuts out 40% of it the actual action and most chips in phones these days like my lumia can capture 16000:1 that is 1 16000th of a second imagine if it had the ram it could probably do 8000 fps for ram cap ram cap is storage limit because well sdcards are not fast enough

and yes iv tested this speed with intense studio light "carer owned a film studio" and its all in the house atm so sometimes you have to have fun and the photos came out amazing and look very different with pure black background

anyways features sell a phone camera to me hense why i have a lumia 950 xl the camera has tons of expected functions that google and apple are fails at providing .. and the lumia 950 is by far the best camera in a phone atm hope they only advance on the next version ...

if i was going to tell the owner of one+ anything in terms of advice... i would say stop competing with fan float companies like google and apple they are floating because of fan base not function if they started selling sh*t to wipe your arse with they would sell to the fanatics grovelling for the next upgrade when truth is phones are fast enough now and screens are as about as good as they need to be including bandwidth... future of phones is going to be how much can u save in battery without lowing the power... how much storage can you add in the same weight .... when you start making it your own product eg none copies you will earn fans and they will stay..!! turn your camera into a proper slowmotion capture you have the ram and def have the chip to get a few 1000ths of a second meaning you can have a few 1000fps and you will be competing with cameras that sell that stuff for for £1000s except yours will be in a phone ... making sure you can make that camera clever but allowing max customising ability will get people like me to follow you because atm if i was going with android i would be most likely betting on myself buying the latest motorola as my choice because it puts best userfriendliness of android with maximum customization and even that i could improve on with ideas ... i hate algorithms everyone uses them everyone doesnt realise it will stall into what has happened

personally tho as it stands im going to be getting my hands on an AR system and use some cameras that can see much better than my eyes specially in the dark to display on the glasses screen .. i am partially sighted (hense why i wont ever touch apple) and as my sight gets worse systems like this will be my last grasp on living a normal life yet no 1 out side of showing off gimics have bothered with AR .. which i find is really sad !!! at the min in dark areas i find myself holding my phones camera up and stairing at the screen to see whats infront of me specially in the dead of night because well it can see and i cant ... it also would work in reverse because when its too bright id love for my AR to black my glasses and show me a screen with the cameras sight !!!

How does a phone review with hedging qualifications and limitations in every category score 4.5 stars?

There is no category with an unqualified win. Every category demonstrates that OnePlus cut corners in design and implementation. The best category is the camera. And that still has its struggles compared to the market this phone is targeting for competition.

The review neglects to mention a number of known issues that deserve deeper analysis to truly gauge the OnePlus 5.

To praise the performance and neglect the history One Plus has with cheating, and that there is blatant evidence of continued cheating in this release is dishonest and incomplete.

Handwaving away the issues of poor battery performance. It doesn't matter that this may not be the "final" software. Very little software ever is. It's not fair to the review or reader to speculate that One Plus will fix it. For a meaningful review, you need to review it as is.

Antenna glitches. The wifi and bluetooth problems get a mention, but are later praised as the ultimate backup to LTE speeds. Not true if they're not reliable. And really, how much other BT 5 products do you have to pair with it?

The screen may be nice enough with good brightness. But it is no flagship or 4.5 star phone with regular FHD. You ding other mid line phones for just having FHD. Now, I'm fine with just FHD. I think it makes a lot of sense in a phone. But that's not the argument you present. And no mention of the jelly issue that WILL NOT BE FIXED.

One of the jobs of a reviewer is some skepticism. It seems pretty clear to me as an armchair Android jockey that OnePlus only sends the best samples out for review. It's because of this that reviewers need to be especially clear about this possibility and take into account the experience of people buying it on the open market. It's like AndroidPit is a shill for OnePlus. Because the blatant bias and skipping over of well documented issues is an embarrassment to this review and to AndroidPit as the publisher.

Maybe it's me, maybe it's our editorial way of communicating it to you readers, but the star rating reflects what you get compared to other devices in that price range. The OnePlus 5 is the best 479 $ phone on the market. If I want QHD, I need to pay 300 Dollars more. If I want two days battery, I have to forego on flagship specs or pay 200 Dollars more. If I want no trouble with the software, I need to get an iPhone. I'm generally not convinced that it's possible to create a five star phone based on Android for < 500 Dollars. The OnePlus 5 is the closest it gets.

The FINALLY UNCOMPROMISING part of the headline, in retrospect, was not my best choice since it's based on the assumption that readers quickly pick up that in the history of OnePlus phones we've always had to suffer from crippling compromises in one department or the other, i.e.

In future articles, I won't be shy on pointing out how OnePlus fails to deliver fixes if they do. I'm still using the device and I'm watching their posterior. If they let us, the users, down I'll call them out. But so far, they deliver fast, often and to the point updates so I'm happy and I would be, had I paid for the device with my own money. And I'm sure so would most of the readers. Hence my high rating.

Hi Eric, nice comment and well said..You forgot the One+ X...I'd begrudgingly rate the One+ 5 as 4 🌟..personally, company ethics and honesty mean something to me and what I'm buying into..As for the physical design, ironically it's more ergonomic in real life than device it copies but it's still a copy... it's One + being lazy and there's no excuse for a company with the tagline of never settle...Put some current devices face down like S8+, Sony XZp, Moto Z, Huawei P10, G6, Nokia 6, and last but not least Nextbit Robin, all of which have their own design language... then tell me plaigarism is ok or a necessity to meet the price.. Personally I'd like something that's at least a bit original.. if only cos most of my friends use iPhone and for me android is about choice, something that's a little bit limited with Apple.I'm gonna be interested to read your opinions on the One +5 and see what you think in 12 months, and if you're still a fan by then?